January Speaker Explores Hudson’s Wood Hollow Metro Park

Megan Shaeffer, Ph.D., Supervisor of Cultural Resources for Summit Metro Parks, will be the guest speaker at the January 9, 2025 meeting of Hudson Heritage Association when she discusses the history and archaeology of Wood Hollow Park, located on Barlow Road near Case Barlow Farm in Hudson.

A generous yet unexpected gift of 150 acres to Summit Metro Parks in 2009 was the catalyst behind Wood Hollow Metro Park. That anonymous gift of land, by a man whose family loved the parks and the Fall Hiking Spree, led to the purchase of several adjacent properties that brought the park’s current size to a little more than 300 acres. Today, visitors to the park can see and hear a variety of native amphibians, birds, insects, mammals and reptiles in the park’s forests, wetlands and open areas. The park’s 1.2-mile Downy Trail gets its name from the small woodpeckers that are among the species inhabiting “wood hollows” in the area’s beech-maple woods.

Dr. Shaeffer’s presentation will explore the park’s history, from its occupation by Indigenous peoples in the precontact period to its early historic settlement. She will discuss the historical and archaeological research done on site before the area became a park and how Wood Hollow’s past fits into the larger picture of the surrounding area and Ohio in general

With degrees in anthropology, archaeology, and sociology, Dr. Megan Shaeffer explores many aspects of human culture, past and present.  She taught anthropology and archaeology at the University of Akron, sociology at Kent State University, and was an archaeologist for the Ohio Department of Transportation. Currently, she is the Supervisor of Cultural Resources at Summit Metro Parks where she combines her educational and work experience to research, protect, and interpret cultural resources throughout the park system.

HHA’s January 9 program, to be held at Barlow Community Center, begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served following the presentation.

Summit Metro Parks, established in 1921, manages more than 11,100 acres of land, including 14 developed parks, several conservation areas and more than 125 miles of trails along with 22.4 miles on the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail.